this post was submitted on 13 May 2025
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Plus I cloned my Wii's NAND so I have all of the Virtual Console games and savegames, and I also dumped all of my GameCube memory cards and put everything to the Dolphin memory cards images.

Everything is cool and future-proof now!Highly recommend doing this if you have a working Wii - just install Homebrew Channel and CleanRip.

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[–] Profligate_parasite@lemm.ee 4 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

If I were to try dumping my collection... do you know if you can do the same soft mod using wiiu? I know I cant do gc with it but it is backward compatible w wi ... Id love to save all my vc stuff...

[–] Pirky@lemmy.world 3 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

Jailbreaking the Wii U is a little bit more involved as it requires some "special" equipment. It's in quotes as not many are going to have a USB A to ethernet adapter, nor a compatible model, but they aren't all that rare either. But once it's done you don't have to worry about jailbreaking it again. Dumping Wii U games isn't much harder than GC/Wii either.

[–] bronxasaur@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, you can do the soft mod for the Wii mode on wiiu and dump your wii games. It actually might work for gc games too, I can't remember for sure.

[–] HoloPengin@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago

Wii U cannot dump GameCube games sadly. I wish it worked too

[–] Sanctus@lemmy.world 15 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Damn. Did you rip the discs yourself or just upload your memory and NAND images? I should do something similar soon as I have 1 GameCube that never gets played.

[–] umbraroze@slrpnk.net 16 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Ripped all of the discs using a softmodded Wii. Used a few homebrew apps, CleanRip (disc dumping), GCMM (for GameCube memory cards) and I think there was another tool for backing up the Wii NAND (could have been just part of bootmii/homebrew channel)

[–] Sanctus@lemmy.world 3 points 14 hours ago

Thank you, mission objectives received. We storin' this for future generations to enjoy.

[–] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 10 hours ago

Sweet! I did similar with backing up my DS carts and saves so I could play them all on 3DS off the SD card with Twilight Menu.

[–] mesamunefire@piefed.social 10 points 16 hours ago

Congrats on your forever games!

[–] Igilq@szmer.info 5 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

How long did it take to dump them? I want to do something similar

[–] Pirky@lemmy.world 11 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (2 children)

Not OP, but I have dumped my own collection of GameCube and Wii games.
The easiest way to do it is with a jailbroken Wii since it's not hard to do. Once jailbroken, the dumping process is about 12 minutes for a GC game and about 20-30 minutes for a Wii game (I forget the exact time). So with that in mind, you can make a rough calculation for how long it will take to dump your collection.
There are a few unmentioned steps, like converting the games from .iso to .rvz to save on space, but it's rather easy to get going when you have a guide to follow.

[–] umbraroze@slrpnk.net 5 points 15 hours ago

Yup, those times sound about the same as what happened with me. Plus the time spent swapping SD cards, because I couldn't get CleanRip to work with the USB drives I had at hand, only FAT32 SD cards.

Also, at every step of the way when converting ISOs to RVZ, I ran Dolphin's verification thing, just for paranoia I guess.

[–] Igilq@szmer.info 5 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

do you have such guide? I already jailbroke my Wii... i think since I have homebrew and clean ripper

[–] umbraroze@slrpnk.net 5 points 12 hours ago

I don't want to be condescending. Dolphin Wiki has an article about ripping games. You have to Google it. Or something. I can't give a link because 🎶 Nintendo has orbital lazors 🎶 /bill wurz

[–] longshanks197@fedia.io 1 points 14 hours ago

congrats! I did a similar thing a few years back. I dumped disks and was playing everything off a hard drive attached to the Wii before the disk drive died. I then dumped my NAND and GameCube cards when the video card in the Wii started to die (low signal/dim display). Moved it all to dolphin emu with dolphin bar, real wiimotes, and mayflash GC adapter for real GC controllers.

[–] nsantoro73@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Way to go!

I don't suppose you'd be willing to share that trove, would ya?

[–] umbraroze@slrpnk.net 7 points 13 hours ago

Would love to, but Nintendo nukes people who do that from the orbit. (Actually, this whole thing started when I tried to download ISOs and found most of the sites down.)

However, if you do personal archival projects, they legally can't do shit! We have laws here.

[–] iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works 1 points 15 hours ago

Great collection.

[–] ishambard@cupoftea.social 1 points 16 hours ago

@umbraroze

I see Lost Kingdoms and Baten Kaitos on that list... Immediately a top tier list of games